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Silverware scraping against plates was hardly an appealing sound. Sharp, metallic, screeching sounds that reminded her of uneven walking down corroded stairs or scalpels being thrown aside—but they were the only noises she could focus on. Whatever her family was talking about seemed positive (they were celebrating her brother getting a scholarship, right?), and surely, if she could focus on their words, she’d be laughing and smiling along with them.
But she could only hear the knives against the plates.
“Eileen? Are you alright?” Her name shook her from her trance. Her mother’s hand touched the back of her own as she continued speaking. “We wanted to know if you’d be coming home for Thanksgiving.”
“Oh, right… that’s in a few weeks, isn’t it?” Her voice felt detached. “I’ll see how much work I’ll have that weekend. It’s close to the end of the semester, after all…”
“Henry can come too, if he wants,” Her father added. Her mother shot him a pointed glance. The news that she and Henry were dating didn’t go over well. They weren’t angry, at least, but the disappointment in their voices was palpable. ‘This is a temporary relationship, right?’ and ‘Artists don’t make good money, you know,’ and even ‘Maybe you should talk with your therapist before you jump into a relationship with him,’ were among the earliest comments that they had made. Eileen had wondered if they were being superstitious—he would be her sixth romantic partner, maybe they were trying to link that to the number of the beast. But no… she had never told them about her first.
Her first relationship was when she was in eighth grade, with a girl in her geometry class with whom she’d pass notes back and forth. She’d doodle all over the margins of her notebooks, and had asked her out with a similarly drawn-on note. It lasted for a few days—she had kissed Eileen in the secrecy of the girls’ bathroom, but Eileen had panicked over the idea of being found out and pushed her away.
She could imagine poor Henry at the family dinner table, gingerly picking at a slice of turkey as her mother asked him to explain every gap in his resume. It’d probably be easier to rip the bandage off now and tell them they couldn’t make it and that graduate school work was just that time consuming, but she felt that she should at least extend the invitation to him.
“I’ll ask him about it,” She said, stirring the ice in her glass with a straw. “But… I don’t want to guarantee anything just now.”
Her father had walked her to the train station after lunch. “You sure everything’s alright? You’re not usually this quiet…”
A sigh. “I’m fine, Dad. There’s just… a lot happening now,” Eileen gestured with the arm that wasn’t holding her handbag. “Work’s harder when my classes get more serious, you know? Next semester’s my final semester and my mind is kind of… scattered.” She didn’t mention that, even though it was half a year ago, the attack was still haunting her.
“Henry’s not treating you badly or anything, right?” She nearly threw her handbag.
“No! God, why do you think everything’s his fault?” It wasn’t her intention to shout at him, but they had had this conversation too many times now. Her father stepped back, alarmed. “He’s the one keeping me grounded! I’d be an even bigger mess without him!” The words were leaving her mouth faster than she could think.
Her father put his hands in front of him, defensively. “Eileen, please, you’re getting worked up. He’s just… he’s a weird guy, you know? The man can barely hold a conversation and he doesn’t even look you in the eyes when you’re talking to him. I don’t know how you’ve put up with it for so long, especially when he’s out of a job,”
“I’m not ‘putting up’ with him—I like being around him!” What was so wrong with Henry being weird, anyway? That didn’t make him dangerous. “And he’s not out of a job anymore… he just hasn’t been hired full time yet.” The temp agency had told him that the insurance company where they had placed them almost always hired administrative assistants. Surely, it wouldn’t take much longer…
“Alright, alright, I’m sorry. You’re the one dating him, you know him better than me,” He shook his head, “But I’m not the only one who’s noticed that you’ve been out of sorts lately, Pumpkin. Is he really helping you to get back to normal, or is he just holding you back?"
As if she could go back to how she was before.
The train arrived, and she hugged her father before climbing aboard, sliding into a window seat. Her father stayed on the platform, even after the train left. His words echoed in her mind. Did her family really see her as being that different now? A broken version of the person she once was? And why on earth did they think it was, somehow, all Henry’s fault?
They had never acted like this around her second (and to their knowledge, first) relationship. She’d hesitate to even count him as one of her partners, but since her parents would always call him her first boyfriend, she supposed he should be there. He was way above her league as far as the high school hierarchy went—no one could believe that one of the stars of the soccer team had asked someone in AP American History out for prom. She thought it was a joke… and in some way, it probably was. Not even halfway through the night, he had snuck away from her to tongue kiss his ex. She didn’t want to think about that. Instead, she flipped open her phone.
on the train! eta @ v stn is 5:40
Henry preferred texting over calls. Eileen didn’t mind—she didn’t want people on the train to overhear her, anyway—but trying to spell out words on a numerical keyboard was something else entirely. She wondered if Henry could even understand what she was saying. The phone vibrated.
ok ill meet u there :)
It was cute how often he’d send smiley faces with his texts and emails, especially with how rarely he seemed to smile in person. She always smiled back, even though he couldn’t see. She tucked her phone back into her pocket and pulled her CD player out of her bag, hoping that the batteries had enough charge to last the ride.
She didn’t have a serious relationship until her second year of college. He was a philosophy major with a kind face that betrayed his ego. They were each other’s first sexual partners, and she pointedly broke up with him after he turned a pillow talk session into a round of debate over whether or not humans were inherently selfish and cruel. No matter how often she’d bring up how Turkana Boy was cared for or how Burial 9 had lived for ten years after losing the use of his arms, he’d say ‘atom bomb’ and nothing else. Her way back to her dorm might have been the angriest walk of shame she’d ever done.
The train’s doors opened, letting in a biting rush of cold air. Eileen hugged herself. It wasn’t even winter, technically, yet she found herself wearing two sweaters under her coat in order to keep warm. Along with night coming all too quickly, this was her least favorite time of year. The dim yellow light of the platform did little to dispel the darkness, but at least it illuminated the figure waiting for her.
Henry waved at her. A small gesture, like any other gesture he did, but still a warm one. She reached for his hand and laced her fingers between his, pulling their arms together.
“How was lunch?” Henry’s voice was quiet, barely audible over the train’s departure.
“It was… unsurprising, I guess,” Eileen huddled closer to him, “I’m still disappointing them, especially now that I’m dating you. You’re invited to Thanksgiving, though.” She snorted while saying that, expecting Henry to join her in shooting down the idea.
“That sounds nice, actually… I can’t remember the last time I’ve been at a family dinner,” Well, that just made her heart sink. Maybe she’d finish her school work early after all. “Even if they still don’t trust me.”
“Maybe this will win them over, then,” She smiled at him, watching as he awkwardly smiled back.
They returned to Henry’s apartment. They were still living on separate floors, and Eileen would usually stay in her own unit when she was kept busy with school work, but he never minded her spending the night.
She changed almost immediately into sleepwear--an old t-shirt that he had lent to her. 'It was some promotional event when I was in college,’ he had told her ‘I never wear it.’. He hadn’t expected her to claim it so enthusiastically—it was already large on him, so Eileen was practically swimming in it.
“Any plans for tonight?” She sat on one end of the couch, giving Henry ample space in case he sat down. He shrugged. “Mostly just unwinding. We can see if there’s anything on TV?” He was never one for elaborate evening plans, but she liked that about him. Even if they ended up watching something boring, they could just turn the volume down and talk about something else. Henry admitted that he’d often do that even when no one was over, just to have some background noise when he was alone.
They decided on some cheesy made-for-TV movie—the kind that was made to scare stay-at-home mothers about video games or goth kids or the internet. They agreed that they weren’t good movies, but they were one of Henry’s favorite things to watch. The first time—and really, one of the only times—she had ever heard him laugh was when they were watching one about a teenager becoming addicted to online pornography. Eileen was worried when she heard him wheezing, and turned over to see him face down on the couch and shaking. She asked if everything was alright, to which he coughed out, ‘He’s just… staring at it! He isn’t even trying to touch himself!’
This one didn’t have as ridiculous a premise—something about high school cheerleaders. They didn’t catch the beginning. Henry joined her on the couch, placing a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. He flashed her an almost-smile as she rested her head on his shoulder. Even if the movie didn’t end up being as funny as some of the others, at least she was comfortable.
“Was your high school like that?” The cheerleaders in the movie were apparently partaking in some sort of hazing ritual where they were putting mayonnaise in their hair. Eileen wrinkled her nose.
“What? No! That’s just weird,” Henry never opened up much about his childhood, mostly just saying that it was a lonely one. She hoped he wasn’t using made-for-TV movies as his only comparison. “But I was never on any sports teams, anyway. I was too concerned with my grades,”
The scene started out mildly enough, with the main characters arguing in a car. But as the camera hovered over a knife, she felt her jaw tighten. It was too much, too quickly, seeing the girl being attacked, hearing her desperate screams—
Eileen ran to the bathroom, slamming the door shut. She knelt in front of the toilet. It was as though her soul was trying to escape her body, yet she only managed to dry heave. She dropped to the floor and curled in on herself, digging her fingernails into her shoulders. How pathetic! It was just a movie—not even a particularly well made one—and it had gotten this sort of reaction out of her. She was safe now. That happened months ago. Why was she still shaking? Stupid… she should have been over this by now…
No. There was no going back to normal, not after what she had been through.
Trembling, she pulled herself up to the sink. The face that looked back at her from the mirror was hardly recognizable. The dark rings under her eyes, her sunken cheeks… no wonder her parents had been so worried. She looked hollow.
And to think, this time last year she’d have been ecstatic to lose some weight. Just get beaten within an inch of your life, fight for that inch in your nightmares, and try to live the life that you fought for as if nothing happened. You’ll start to only enjoy meals with the only other person who knows what happened, because spending time with him is the only thing that makes you happy anymore. Within months, you’ll look more like Ötzi than you ever wanted!
She wished she could go back to being so naïve.
Henry was standing on the other side of the door. He quickly averted her gaze as she exited the bathroom. “Um,” he scratched his thumb against his chin, “I changed the channel to some cartoons. Or we could just not watch anything! We could just sit and talk…” his voice was quiet. “I… don’t want to scare you again. Like that. I’m sorry.”
It took all of her self control to not grab his face and kiss him in that moment. Of all of the people she could have been trapped in hell with, she definitely lucked out. Eileen pressed her head against his chest, her arms wrapping around him. Henry flinched at her sudden embrace before moving a hand to stroke her hair.
“Sitting and talking sounds great,” She murmured, her face pressed against him. Doubting that Henry could understand what she was saying, she peeled herself from his chest and looked up at him. “Can you tell me more about photographers you like?”
Henry furrowed his brow at her. “You actually want to hear me talk about them? I was worried I bored you last time…”
Eileen shook her head. She wanted to tell him how much she loved listening to him talk about things he was passionate about, how his voice would raise in volume and how his eyes would shine. He seemed embarrassed when she first asked him about one of the big art books he kept on his shelf, but once he started talking about Richard Misrach’s eye for color and negative space, it was as if he had all the confidence in the world.
Instead, she went with a less personal answer. “I like to listen,” Henry’s lips twitched. He moved away from her to pull a book from the shelf.
“Okay… so Abelardo Morell has this incredible way of capturing landscapes along with their terrain. It’s fascinating—do you know what the camera obscura is?”
She had no idea, but she wanted nothing more that to hear him talk about it.
Spending the night together was a frequent occurrence now. She hesitated to say ‘sleeping together’—while they were quite literally sharing a bed and sleeping at the same time, the phrase implied sex, something that Henry seemingly had no interest in.
He never touched her without permission. She had baked him a cake for his birthday (nothing too exciting, just a box mix and her first attempt at making buttercream icing), and after his initial surprise, he asked her if he could kiss her. It was an unusual question, she thought, but the more she had considered it the more she had realized that she was the one who initiated any intimacy.
Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
He knew how she had been violated that night. Her body bore the scars of the physical attack, enough to prove to others that it wasn’t a dream. But the way he seeped into her mind, taking control of her thoughts and her voice as she could only watch… that left a less tangible mark. Eileen wondered if the dark thoughts that crossed her mind after that night were remnants of the attack—finger prints left smeared on the walls of her brain.
Perhaps Henry was only delicate with her out of fear. She had never seen her own face in the otherworld, but she must’ve looked grotesque. Bloodied, bruised, and occasionally lashing out at him with words that were not her own. Her own thoughts were haunted by the ghosts that pursued them that night—did he ever see her as one of them?
When she wrapped her arms around him and nuzzled her face between his shoulder and the nape of his neck, did he know it was an act of affection? Or did he think she was using him as a human shield to throw at the next monster that came their way?
Sighing, she pulled herself closer to him. At least he never seemed bothered or disgusted by her affection… just surprised. He had always been shy around the residents of South Ashfield Heights—she remembered how flummoxed he was when she greeted him when he was moving in, or how quickly he’d move through the hallways to avoid conversations with other tenants. Once she left her room to find him engaged in a conversation with Frank, and while he was politely answering all of the superintendent’s questions about what he did for work and where he went to school, the look in Henry’s eyes was like a frantic rabbit, desperately seeking out any escape path he could find. Eileen greeted Frank to talk about an issue she was having with her unit’s hot water, and within seconds, Henry’s door had clicked shut.
He had moved in not long after she had broken up with her fourth partner. She was the first female partner she had introduced to her parents, and apart from the expected awkwardness of the ‘So, I’m also into women’ conversation, it had gone pretty well. Her girlfriend was probably the best that her ‘This is just a phase, right?’ parents could ask for—a statuesque business major from Grenoble who doted on her constantly. Too much, if you’d asked Eileen, who felt more like she had seen her more as her ‘cute pet American’ than a romantic partner. She had moved back to France, so at least the relationship had a relatively natural ending point.
Henry was awake before her, but she wouldn’t have been able to tell were it not for him grumbling in disappointment when she stopped spooning him.
“We can’t stay in bed all day!” she laughed, nudging his arm. Another grumble.
“I wish we could…”
Sundays were never busy days for them. Planning things would make them too aware of the seconds ticking by before it was back to weekly grind. When it grew too late, they’d say their goodbyes and Eileen would head back to her apartment, making sure she had finished any classwork before returning to a lonely bed. Sharing the same space was enough to make the fleeting weekend fulfilling.
Henry was sprawled out on the sofa, engrossed in a book. The sun poured in through the blinds, casting severe shadows across the living room. In spite of the intense sunlight, Henry seemed completely relaxed, absentmindedly tucking loose locks of hair behind his ears as he read. The television was on, though barely audible—just enough to be background noise.
“I’m going out to the store—do you want to come with?” She didn’t have a reason to go out other than the simple desire for fresh air. Henry was more reluctant to come along. Talking to Eileen was different when other people were around. Plus, there was a balcony on this floor, so if he ever needed a smoke break he didn’t have to do so on street level. Even so, Eileen felt the need to extend the offer.
“No thanks…” Henry changed position to look at her, his expression soft. “Stay safe, okay?”
Outside was crowded, busy with foot traffic. It was a sight that she enjoyed, and one that made her want to stay in Ashfield despite everything that happened. Cities fascinated her—the way that people who came from completely different backgrounds could come together and build a community, how strangers could form friendships or even relationships with each other, how you could understand so much about them just by seeing part of their morning routine… it was noticing these patterns that started her interest in anthropology. Though, she supposed she learned at a young age that there were people that communities would ostracize and abandon, no matter what she had to say about it.
It was probably a bad idea for her to carry loose change for panhandlers who waited by the convenience store doors. Charity to the less fortunate is what got her placed on a list of human sacrifices, after all. And yet… it was such a simple act. Not doing the least bit of work to help out those who were less fortunate just felt wrong to her. Sometimes they would hold the doors open for her, other times they’d just ask if she could spare some change.
She placed a few dollars into a plastic cup. The woman holding the cup looked to be in her late sixties, and flashed Eileen a toothless smile. How long had she been living on the streets? Surely, there had to be someone who was missing her…
“Hey! Don’t encourage the beggars!” A hand snapped around Eileen’s wrist. Her blood turned cold when she saw the dark blue windbreaker around the hand. With a primal shriek, she wriggled her hand from the stranger’s grasp and ran.
It couldn’t have been him. Of course it couldn’t have been him. He was dead (as if that had stopped him the first time) and he didn’t have any sort of attachment to where they were living now and it had been half a year ago—
But in that moment, she saw him grabbing her wrist so she couldn’t block his fist.
The walk back to the building was a blur. She didn’t even realize until she was in front of Henry’s door that her hands were shaking. Somehow, she stilled them long enough to unlock the door. She didn’t want to disturb him—she had disturbed enough people already, and she was thoroughly embarrassed. She held her breath as she crawled into his bedroom.
She pulled a blanket and pillow off of his bed and slumped against the wall. The blanket smelled like Henry, and Henry was safe. Even if that hand did belong to Walter and he was back and he followed them here, she and Henry could prepare and they would know what to expect.
…Who was she kidding? It was just a person wearing a blue jacket, and she was just a scared little girl who overreacted and had an anxiety attack in public. Eileen felt absolutely pathetic. She held the pillow to her face and screamed.
‘You’re always overreacting, Eileen!’ her last pre-Henry boyfriend would say. She did overreact, plenty of times, but he’d tell her this every time she wanted to stay in for the night or when she told him that she wanted to hang out with her friends instead of him. She cried easily, she knew this, and he’d tell her that she was being hysterical. The final straw was when he followed her home one night after she told him she wanted to be alone. Henry was her neighbor, then.
She wondered if he had heard them argue.
She wondered if he had heard her slap him across the cheek.
“Eileen? What happened? Are you okay?” She certainly wasn’t. She didn’t look up from the pillow, but she could see Henry sitting next to her out of the corner of her eye. He timidly placed his hand on her back. She bristled as it brushed against her scars.
She tried to speak, but the only sound that escaped from her lips was a whine. How pathetic—could she do anything without Henry coming to her rescue? She wasn’t even outside for a half hour, and she was a quivering mess.
“I thought—I thought I saw him…” Henry leaned in closer to hear her. “It’s stupid—someone just grabbed my wrist and I overreacted!” Her voice was cracking.
“It’s not stupid… you’re not stupid…”
“I am! I’m a big, stupid disaster!” She slammed the pillow to the ground. It wasn’t nearly as impactful as she wanted, flopping quietly in front of her. “I can’t even watch movies without freaking out like this!”
“That doesn’t make you stupid!” Henry was running his hands through his hair. These weren’t the types of conversations that he liked to have. “You can’t just forget what happened—neither can I! We can’t expect ourselves to move on like everything is normal…”
“Is that why you never touch me?” It sounded meaner than she had intended, even with her voice hitching. She sniffled. “You can’t stop seeing the blood and the bruises? You can’t hold me without thinking about that night?”
Henry’s face fell. “No… I-I…” He bit his lip. She couldn’t keep the venom in her voice for long.
“God… I’m sorry. That was really mean… I didn’t mean it like that, Henry…”
“I…” he was looking down at his hands. “I… I love you. A lot. And I don’t want to scare you or make you uncomfortable by suddenly touching you—I don’t want you to feel nervous around me or like I’m demanding your affection or anything like that. I… I want you to feel safe…”
It was the first time either of them had said ‘love’, in regards to one another. Eileen’s heart fell to the pit of her stomach.
“Henry…” her hands were still trembling as she put them on his cheeks. He looked back at her, his expression troubled. “I do feel safe around you. The safest I’ve felt in a while,” She pulled his face close and kissed him. A few seconds of hesitation followed before Henry wrapped his arms around her, holding her close.
She was comfortable, there. Henry was warm. Welcoming. Even with his arms brushing up against her scars, she felt secure.
Henry broke the silence. “So… uh… we’re staying in for the rest of the day?” Eileen smiled.
“I think that’s a great idea,” She lifted herself from the floor, offering her hand to Henry. He clasped his hand around hers and pulled himself up, a small smile on his lips.